


The Cygnet

by bluetoast



Series: Birds of a Feather [39]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Deaf Dean Winchester, F/M, Gen, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:51:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1585661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluetoast/pseuds/bluetoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Ignacia both have different fears about about being parents and their unborn child. They're hoping for healthy - and beyond that, everything else would be considered an extra blessing. While Ignacia worries about having childhood stolen, Dean's fear of the child being deaf is outweighed by the fear of himself becoming like John Winchester.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cygnet

Ignacia Coulter didn't have the worries she supposed most mothers-to-be had. Well, not all of them, anyway. She worried about being a good mother and if the baby would be healthy. She worried about things that would most likely never matter – because her baby wasn't going to spend their childhood chasing the Olympic Dream she did. Not by force and hopefully, not by choice. Baby deserved a childhood that was just that: a childhood. She maintained the belief that one of the reasons she herself was so disinterested in things women her age found fascinating was because she long ago learned to tune out distractions and focus on what was important.

Watching the teenage girls at the gym she taught at suddenly realize just how close Summer and the Athens games were was almost scary. The quick passing of weeks seemed to have turned up the fire of competition made Ignacia glad she had a group of five year old tumblers who were more interested in jumping from the trampolines into the foam pits than flips and handsprings. The five year old kids also tended to watch the older girls doing complicated moves in a sort of transfixed awe, and Ignacia couldn't blame them. It hadn't been that long ago she could do those moves – that looking back, almost looked suicidal as the girls just threw their thin bodies around like it was nothing and with no care.

Seeing the girls land short on a tumbling pass and landing on the mats always made Ignacia thankful that the Thomas Salto was a banned move. Dean had told her he tried it once in practice – and ended up flat on his back in the pit, the wind knocked out of him. She herself had tried it once when she was twelve – and she had gotten a bruise on her backside that made it painful to walk for a week. But at least she could walk – and swore she'd never try something that stupid again.

The little girls in her class seemed content with twirling and cartwheeling – but whereas Ignacia and her friends grew up 'playing Nadia', the girls here seemed to play either 'Mary Lou' or a member of the Magnificent Seven. Very few girls knew that she herself had competed against those seven Americans – and she could still remember each and every one of their faces, shining with joy.

A joy she got to partake in four years later, in Sydney.

“Miss Annie?” A tug at her hand brought her from her musings and she looked down into the face of the most timid of her girls, Kelsey.

“Yes?” She bent down to get on the girl's level. “Is something wrong?”

“How do they do that?” She pointed across the gym and Ignacia looked where the senior girls were doing beam dismounts. “It looks hard.” 

“It is hard.” She gave the girl an encouraging smile. “It takes lots of practice to do that.”

“Can you do that?” She rubbed her nose as a girl did a full tuck somersault off the beam and nailed the landing.

“I used to.” She straightened up. “Beam was never my event.” 

“Oh.” She shuffled away to join her class who were bouncing around on the floor, more content with finding the most spring-y parts of it than any actual gymnastics. 

Ignacia rubbed her nose, catching a whiff of chalk from her hands and she coughed. If Baby wanted to do innocent tumbling, like these girls, that was fine. The fear that the Baby might want more than that – was enough to make her worry. 

*  
Stress had been Dean's constant companion since he was five years old. He had learned to handle it at first with devoting his time to Sammy and later, with gymnastics. Now the skills he had the skills to manage stress in his life and not let it get the better of him, almost to the point where he could appear if he wasn't stressed at all. Being married and expecting a baby weren't as stressful to him as some might think it would be. 

Dean was not concerned if Baby was going to do gymnastics. From the way the child kicked, he swore they had a swimmer on their hands, not a gymnast. Ignacia thought that was amusing – most of the time. He supposed other expecting parents might start dreaming of their child's future before they're born. Dreams of sports championships, graduating with honors, spelling bees and other such things. It was wretched, he thought – to wish the problems of an adolescent or adult upon a child who wasn't even born. He had never understood why people hoped for specific things in their children. A certain hair or eye color, that they were handsome or pretty, that they had a good personality, all the things that quite frankly, Dean thought should be considered a bonus. Dean had only one wish in that regard and Ignacia shared it: healthy. Dean wanted Baby to be healthy – and not deaf, like him.

While he never had an issue with being deaf, he didn't want Baby to go through the struggles he went through – was still going through, because despite the grades he was making, there were plenty of people in the program at Stanford who couldn't believe they had to have classes with a deaf guy. The professors didn't express it that much but there was no shortage of students who looked at him as if Dean was dirt.

You think somewhere in their education they would have learned that deaf people are masters of body language and ninety nine times out of a hundred can tell when a person is lying. It made watching politicians almost amusing sometimes – and mysteries on television? Don't even get him started on that, because the last one to stump him was who shot Mr. Burns on _The Simpsons._

The only thing was that if Baby was deaf, at least he could understand what they were going through.

Dean had only one other fear in regards to being a parent. Deep down, the one thing that terrified him more than his child being deaf or anything else was turning into a father like John Winchester. 

No matter how many times he told himself that maybe if his mom had lived John wouldn't have gone the way he did, he had to remind himself that he'd not harmed him until after Sam was born. He didn't know what it was, why it was – and most of the time, Dean really didn't want to know. He hadn't deserved the beatings and the only one at fault was John.

Dean couldn't see any reason why he would ever harm Baby, but it was like some wretched nightmare that kept coming back to haunt him. The fear that something would cause him to snap, something would make him go dark side. 

Healthy was all Dean was asking God for in regards to Baby. 

**  
Ignacia and Dean had agreed to find out the sex of the baby mainly because neither of them were big fans of surprises. The only real problem was that when the time for the ultrasound came, Dean had an exam he couldn't reschedule and she had to go alone. If not for the first time, she wished Sam could keep a steady girlfriend so she would at least have someone to go with her – and in case the OBGYN on duty that day was the one whose English she could barely understand. February in California was odd – one day it was damp and gray, reminding her of Romania and the next, it could be sunny and pleasantly warm. How she managed to not get a cold every other week she still didn't know.

“Mrs. Coulter?” A kind faced nurse called into the waiting room and she stood up and walked over to her. She glanced at the woman's name-tag before replying.

“Good afternoon, Helen.” She said in reply.

Helen nodded in reply and led her back to an exam room. “How are you this afternoon?”

“Fine – a little sore, but at least the morning sickness is long gone.” They came into a small room near the end of the hall and she took off her coat. 

“That's good. Dean not with you today?” Helen took her coat and hung it on a hook on the back of the door. 

“No, he had an exam he couldn't get out of.” She let out a breath. “I'm hoping the baby won't be shy.” 

“Well, if he or she is, we can schedule another ultrasound in a few weeks.” She helped her lay down. “Now you're about eighteen weeks, correct?” Helen pulled on a pair of gloves and picked up the contact-gel. 

“Somewhere between eighteen and nineteen – the due date keeps getting shuffled around. It's been as early as the fourteen of June and as late as the twenty-fourth.” Ignacia winced. “I always forget how cold that gel is.”

“I'm sorry.” She finished applying the gel and flipped on the ultrasound machine and then picked up the wand. “Somewhere in some classroom, there's probably a student who's going to find a way for that gel to be warm.”

Ignacia chuckled and turned her head as Helen started moving the wand over her slightly rounded stomach. “There's still just one, right?”

“Yup, just one.” She glanced at the screen. “Let's see here...” She narrowed her eyes for a moment. 

“What's wrong?” Ignacia was staring at the screen, trying to figure out what she was seeing. 

“Nothing's wrong...” She moved the wand closer to Ignacia's hip. “The baby's just lying at an odd angle – sort of stretched out.”

“So I take it the baby is not being shy, so to speak.” Her eyes scanned the picture of the tiny infant, who sort of reminded her of the way Dean slept from time to time, flat on his stomach, arms and legs spread.

“Oh, this girl is not being shy.” Helen turned and gave her a smile. “And she's _definitely_ a girl.” 

Ignacia feels the corners of her mouth lift. “A girl?” 

“Oh yes... very much so.” Helen moved the wand again and pointed to a spot on the screen. “Everything looks to be normal and on schedule.”

*  
Dean's fear of becoming like John Winchester left when he learned that Baby was a girl. Somehow, having not been around girls growing up – at least, outside of school, the worry just seemed to fade away. The fear of her being deaf, however, that hadn't gone away. Ignacia understood a little – her fear in regards to health was that their girl would be cursed with being extremely short, or something of that nature. He'd stated that as she was two inches short of five feet and he was an inch short of six feet, if they took the average, their daughter should end up being around five foot four. 

And then he added it was pretty silly to worry about her height when she hadn't even learned to walk yet. 

Ignacia had laughed at that. 

The small nursery was furnished in things found at the second hand store and the Goodwill. Everyone seemed to send them clothes, blankets, and other baby goods. His parents had sent them a baby monitor for hearing impaired parents – and after a test demonstration, Ignacia stated they wouldn't need any others. It was sort of like the time he showed her how the bed-shaker alarm worked. There was no real theme for the little room that the apartment touted as a second bedroom but was just big enough for a changing table, crib and dresser – it didn't even have a closet. Dean had a feeling most people who rented apartments similar to theirs used it for an office. 

Dean set the ceramic angel he'd found in a garage sale when he was twelve on the shelf in the room, smiling. He remembered all the ribbing he'd taken for having it – but he had one almost exactly like it when he lived in Kansas, all those years ago. He nudged it slightly with his finger, letting out a breath. True, he and Ignacia had not planned on becoming parents so soon after getting married – but honestly, he wouldn't have it any other way now that the baby was almost here.

*  
Liesel Andrea Coulter came into the world on June eighteenth, two thousand four, with a head full of hair and a very strong pair of lungs. Weighing in at exactly seven pounds, she was pink, healthy and hearing. 

Ignacia decided she'd wait until the little girl was older to worry about things like gymnastics and stolen childhoods. She looked up from the laundry she was folding to where Dean was sitting in the rocking chair her father-in-law had made, feeding Liesel a bottle. She shook her head and then glanced at the television, where the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Athens was playing. “The Greek Alphabet is confusing – I never know which country will come next.” 

Dean looked up, frowning. “What?”

She wondered, not for the first time, how many times she would have to remind herself that Dean was deaf. Then she wondered why she kept forgetting. “I never can figure out the orders in some opening ceremonies.” 

“I know what you mean. The again, the last two Olympics, the native language was English, so going back to one that isn't can be confusing.” Dean set the bottle down and shifted Liesel so he could burp her. “Though...” He paused. “What languages are similar to Romanian?” 

“Either German or French – and it's still a big difference.” She leaned back against the couch, dropping a pair of socks into the basket. “Greek on the other hand...” She shook her head. “I have no idea how to figure what the order will be at the Beijing Games.” Ignacia sighed. “But I don't want to think that far ahead right now.” 

Dean stood up and moved to sit on the couch next to her. “I'd just like to get to the end of the semester first.”

She put another pair of socks together and tossed it into the basket before leaning back and resting her head on his free shoulder, and put her finger against their daughter's palm, grinning when the infant grabbed it tight. If Liesel wanted to do gymnastics for fun, that was perfectly fine with her. The involuntary thought of the girl already having the grip for it ran through her mind before she fully realized and then was gone.

*  
Two hundred and seventy miles south of the Coulter's apartment, a redwood tree, three hundred and twenty-five feet tall, was cleaved in two. The tree would not be discovered by park rangers in the Yosemite National Park for two days, after a team of hikers called the day before. Had they been there that night, they would have seen a winged creature in golden armor, cradling another being like him, only the slain one's armor was silver. The one adorned in gold cried out to a star-filled sky in complete and total agony.


End file.
